As a form of weather modification, wintertime cloud seeding is aimed at enhancing snowfall in mountainous regions to increase the snowpack, resulting in more spring runoff and water supplies in the surrounding areas.

The DRI Cloud Seeding Program is operated within Atmospheric Sciences, located in the Northern Nevada Science Center (NNSC), Reno, Nevada. The DRI cloud seeding program originated as an outgrowth of DRI weather modification research programs funded through USBR and NOAA.

Current DRI research is focused on the quantitative evaluation of winter storm cloud seeding using ultra trace chemical analysis of snow samples, atmospheric model simulations of seeding plume transport, and hydrologic modeling to estimate the additional runoff due to cloud seeding.